Wrestling Heritage

Scarcely six minutes of wrestling but a bout cram-packed with interest points with all 4 protagonists playing their roles to the full.

 

It was good to see Goldbelt in all his glory and Mike Judd was marvellous in feigning a bored reluctance to list out the titles and talents of the British Middleweight champion, former British Welterweight champion, King of the Ring, and Country and Western singer.  The list was prompted by Modest Maxine himself, the name embroidered on his ring attire, and the two of them, coincidentally side-by-side facing the camera, came across as a Music Hall pairing à la Morecombe and Wise.  Later in the bout Maxine would be seen astride the corner post with Judd pinned beneath him.  Judd was a money-man, seldom in the fray, not from the Charlie Fisher school at all, and we wondered by virtue of this unusual intimacy whether this promoter within Dale Martin’s was perhaps responsible for the Maxine push that fans have often tried to fathom?

 

Opposing the current champion was the former, Clayton Thomson from Glasgow.  Kent Walton got very excited about Clay, almost as skilful as George Kidd, and even going overboard in creating him a whole new weight bracket and proclaiming him the former British Light Middleweight champion.  How cruel we are to mock a mere slip of the tongue from our beloved commentator, but we mention it more to show just how good a good liar has to be and how, when how one is concealing information, the mouth tends more to betray than obey.  He had been concentrating so hard on concealing the fact that Maxine had actually vanquished Thomson to claim his title, and he stoutly assured us that Clayton-of-the-famously-fluctuating-weight had been out of action for a couple of years through a back injury.  Those same years equated to the unbeaten run of the masked Exorcist, who had himself coincidentally vanished just recently…

 

Further shenanigans were surely afoot as the pair set about each other from the opening bell with a speed and determination usually saved for the very end of the bout.  Each displayed his own little repertoire and Kent even praised Goldbelt for keeping to the rules.  Thomson’s rolling half nelson leg throws were well worth a rewind, and Maxine delivering a drop-kick was a sight to behold.  The false finishes flew and, with the ever-present tinge of suspicion that wrestling fans have embroidered to their brains, like Brian’s modesty to his pants, we awaited round two and skulduggery for sure.

 

Fanpower had it spot on this time, as the skill of the wrestlers from round one evaporated into thin air and a very poorly arranged little muddle appeared, and poor editing or camerawork failed to show us the back elbow that led to the ultimately splendid sight of portly referee Max Ward rolling around the ring in pain before recovering Lazarus-style to give Maxine his marching orders.  We just knew they couldn’t have kept up the round one rate for much longer!

 

(By now, American fans will be heading for the comment button to explain the importance of deliberate cut points in the editing to obscure a taboo body part or some other undesirable slip, but these were the naïve seventies, colour television had only just arrived, and the cut to the elbow here was an accident rather than any self-inflicted wound.)

 

Maxine just loved the camera and it was noticeable how the concluding melée, which centred around a failed single-leg Boston crab, all took place on the far ropes.  Against those same favourite far ropes we had witnessed in another televised bout a whole series of failed finishes in a Maxine encounter with Robby Baron, but that match was memorable for the slick way the pair changed course and plan.

 

Here there was no time, the six minutes were up, the tv producer was happy, but another  predictably inconclusive and inconsequential disqualification was served up rather belittlingly to the fans where many other storylines could have made for more appeal and box office.  The same inconclusive disqualification as the pair had provided on their preceding television bout from Shoreditch seven years earlier almost to the day.

 

As the loser grabbed the mike from Mike – he wouldn’t have got so close to his wallet – we were treated to a magnificent tirade of remonstration and self-adulation.  Presumably.  For it was impossible to discern with any certainty one single word that the din created.

 

It was all too much for Clay, and this was the last we ever saw of him on television wrestling.  He went off to retirement in Lougton, Essex, a geograhical location inconclusively and inconsequentially situated between the scenes of his hollow disqualification verdicts over Brian Maxine.

 

Brian “Goldbelt” Maxine versus Clayton Thomson, Southend, 11^th May 1977.

 

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